Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Thank you TAB

Homicide totals explained by reader TAB:

Hi there. I noticed your inquiry into why the homicide totals are so different so I will try to help. Part of the problems lie In that this list is a tad jumbled. Because some murders have been ruled justified, numbers have had to be repeated.And while it should logically even out numbers wise, It may still add confusion. Also your number should now be 144 because Gerrod Finch has been ruled a homicide now.

Suspiciously dead male, 302 E. Lanvale St. (8/13) is not listed in either the Ink or Sun.

Suspicious death, unidentified, 2743 St Paul St. (6/1) is not listed by either site.

104. Tony Geiger, 41, 100 block Old Riverside Road (6/2) and 95. Unidentified man, 21, Old Riverside Rd. (6/2) are the same.

61. Unidentified man, 1017 Hillen Road (4/7) is not listed on either site.

Questionable death, N. Abington Ave/Elbert St. (3/27) not listed either places but does not count towards the tally anyways.

And to let you know Marcus Sanchez was the man murdered on July 25th.

So with the addition of Gerrod Finch and the Subtraction of #'s 61, 95, 96, and 142 your list should be on par with murder Ink's and when the Sun catches up, then all 3 should be equal.

3 comments:

Baltimore_Yeti said...

On average we have one murder a day. Talk to the people on the streets, the homeless, street vendors, addicts or scrap metal collectors. Get the raw data from the people that live in this open sewer of a city. The police are not 100% accurate in reporting, findings or classifying crime. Nothing is 100%. Statistical error alone proves body counts are not accurate. Statistical errors plus unmeasurable values are enough for me to believe "N" (where "N" is the number of murders) is much larger. See this wiki article for help understanding "Statistical Errors".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_error

helix said...

"statistical error" has nothing to do with what you're talking about. Just linking to a random wiki page doesn't make your irrational argument valid.

Some number of people are murdered in this town. The measured number that one cites depends on how one counts and how much information is available. We can never know, for instance, if an overdose was really a poisoning or what happened to certain missing people.

I think that frittering about +/- a few murders is a waste of time in the grand scheme of things when the murder rate is so large.

Baltimore_Yeti said...

Helix said-"linking to a random wiki page doesn't make your irrational argument valid."

Baltimore_Yeti said-"It wasn't random, I provided the link so the concept of "statistical error" can be better understood."

"The measured number that one cites depends on how one counts"

Baltimore_Yeti said-"I count using this method (1,2,3,4....)."

Helix said-"I think that frittering about +/- a few murders is a waste of time in the grand scheme of things when the murder rate is so large."

Baltimore_Yeti said-"I want to make sure everyone counts correctly.The +/- are people."